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Title

Boys vs Girls


Broad Question

Do distractions effect how you complete a test?

Specific Question

Between male and female which gender is better with complete a test with and without distractions with accuracy?

Hypothesis

It is hypothesized that the girls will get better test scores on the test while under pressure with distractions then the boys.

Graph of Hypothesis


external image oimg?key=0ArEC7KDPW5O7dGx5bERja1NEUjk3MWNSUlpWRVFVSWc&oid=2&zx=4q3g9qwj56of


Variables

Independent Variable: Distractions

Dependent Variable: Test Scores


Variables That Need To Be Controlled:

  • Number of minutes that the person gets to complete the test
  • Same music played during distractions
  • Same people taking the test
  • Same directions for quiet room
  • Same directions for loud room

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation

  • Multitask= The ability to be able to do more than one task at a time.
  • Average= When you add up a group of numbers and divide them by how many numbers there are.

General Plan

Can boys or girls multitask better? An experiment was conducted during a science class to determine if students work better with or without distractions. Students were asked to read a passage and answer questions without any distraction. The mean score of five girls and five boys was found. Then the students were given another passage to read and answer questions. This time they were challenged to complete the task while listening to music, having a conversation and people around them were talking amongst themselves.

Potential Problems And Solutions


Safety Or Environmental Concerns



Experimental Design


Materials
-Two different passages
Joel's Pa (Grade 3 according to ARI) - (Quiet Room)
Whiz! Baseball (Grade 3 according to ARI) - (Loud Room)
- questions for passage for quiet room
-10 questions for passage for loud room
-An I Pod with headphones
-A pencil or pen
-A quiet space for the first reading.
-Script for the conversation that someone will be reading off of.
-A person to start the conversation
-a camera
-large classroom with 10-12 students in the classroom
-piece of lined paper for each kid
-script of directions

Resources and Budget Table


Data Table

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArEC7KDPW5O7dEU1RUI2V09WcjFUTG1vWHlEYkF1M1E&single=true&gid=0&output=html


Time Line

-Complete Design and collection of all materials March 9th
-Run a test of experiment with Jen 7,8,9th Of March
-Running the experiment on March 12th, in class for the loud room (science room)
- The materials will be borrowed on March 5th
-The data will be completed on March 23rd.
-Completed all trials of experiment on March 21st.
-Complete results and conclusions March 25th.
-Complete all data analysis, mean,median,range,graphs March 22nd.

Background Research


Research
  • The brain can’t really focus when someone is multitasking.
  • People take longer to complete more than one task, and they might have an error while doing the task
  • When someone is giving more than one task, the brain is forced to shut down to think.
  • The term “Multitasking” refereed to computer engineering.
  • In the early 1990’s scientists started testing people on their ability to multi-task.
  • Increasing technology fosters multitasking
  • Author Steven Berlin Johnson said “It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish.”
  • The things that make it hard for boys to multitask are these things.
-they get 70% of them get D’s and F’s from concentrating issues
  • Example of multitasking is talking on the phone and typing at the same time, there are other forms of the task but that is the one scientists test on.
  • Gender usually effects the ability to be able to multitask.

References


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking#Research_on_human_multitasking

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/HumBeh_p022.shtml

http://www.slideshare.net/lamisosoup/effect-of-music-on-cognitive-tasks

Detailed Procedure

  1. When the students come into the classroom area they take their seats and listen for further instructions about the test.
  2. When someone receives their paper in the right hand corner write their name.
  3. Take a reading passage with questions (4th grade level) make the person read it and answer questions without distractions they will have about 10 minutes to finish it.
  4. Then it will be corrected and see how accurate they were without distractions.
  5. When they have finished they will sit quietly until other students are done.
  6. Then they will get a similar passage with questions (same level).
  7. But this time they will be having a conversation with somebody, while listening to music and having people around them talking in a class room setting.
  8. After that they will be graded and then it will be proven if being distracted by noise and sound will effect the ability to concentrate.
  9. They will have a limit of 10 minutes to complete the task.
  10. The passage and question will be very similar but different. The same level of difficulty.
  11. When they are done with the test they sit their and wait till other students are done.

Diagram


Photo List

(quiet space)
-picture of quiet space, with pencil and reading passage
-picture of 2 girls reading the passage in quiet room
-picture of 2 boys reading the passage in quiet room
-Picture of me collecting the data from the passages of quiet room
(loud space)
-picture of the loud space (science room) with all of the materials(pencil,passage)
-picture of 2 girls reading the passage in loud room
-picture of 2 boys reading the passage in loud room
-Picture of me collecting the data from the passages of loud room

Results

All Raw Data




Graphs


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external image oimg?key=0ArEC7KDPW5O7dEU1RUI2V09WcjFUTG1vWHlEYkF1M1E&oid=4&zx=g828gq7hwrcf


Photos


Data Analysis


Conclusion

This experiment was based on if a person is being distracted with music and conversations while trying to complete a task. So, how does distractions affect how you complete tasks? With the data it was proven that boys are better at being distracted then the girls. The grade averages were very low for the girls but they were extremely high for the boys. They exceed with a grade average at about 94% and the girls had a 74%.

Discussion

Does the distraction of music and people talking affect how you score on a test with different genders? It was proven that yes, being distracted does affect how you do on tests. The girls got most distracted when it came to being distracted. The girls scored a 76.4 for their average for being distracted and scored a 87.6 for their average when they weren’t being distracted. The boys average was a 93.2 for being distracted and a 91.4 for not being distracted. No the hypothesis was not supported by the data that was collected. The hypothesis was that the girls would score better but the boys scored better than them. It was shown that there are a lot of effects if you challenge the girls with being distracted because they get distracted a little bit to much and get carried away but the boys got annoyed and tried to block it out, which made their test scores better.
In the first trial that was ran was a “to see if everything worked” trial. It was shown that the person needed more time to complete the test, so the time went from five minutes to ten minutes. Then there was another problem, some of the people got confused because they didn’t know what a Colt was, in my quiet room passage. I had to find a way to see what music I needed to play and I needed to play a fun song to get the testers attention. With the real experiment they had enough time to complete it and the girls used most of their time to goof off and it reflected to their test scores.
With the experiment it could teach people not to let their kids listen to music while doing homework or help teachers know not to distract the kids while they are taking a test or something like that. The only people that this experiment would be useful for is teachers and maybe some parents. It is no doubt most kids listen to music while completing homework but that might end up hurting their score on the assignment.


Benefit to Community and/or Science



Abstract

This experiment was based on if a person is being distracted with music and conversations while trying to complete a task. So, how does distractions affect how you complete tasks? With the data it was proven that boys are better at being distracted then the girls. The grade averages were very low for the girls but they were extremely high for the boys. They exceed with a grade average at about 94% and the girls had a 74%. The hypothesis was that the girls would do much better than the boys and would succeed at the test.The passage for the quiet room was easy and was very understandable and both genders did exceptionally well with that. The loud room passage seemed to be harder for both of the genders to complete. The distractions made the girls more distracted than planned the boys didn’t seem to mind the distractions and went on like nothing was happening. When the subjects weren’t being distracted the boys the first group, didn’t take the test seriously and flunked the test on purpose. The songs that were used to distract were upbeat and seemed to catch the subjects attention, which was exactly what was planned. The results were not expected, it was guessed to be the opposite way around that the boys would do bad and the girls would be great at it.